An Open Valve: How a Modding Community Shaped the Future of Virtual Reality Read articles from the magazine right here on Make:. Don’t have a subscription yet? Get one today. In a private room, deep within the walls of one of the most respected game studios in the world, I stand before a veritable smorgasbord of electronics prototypes. “This is the zombie machine, we put it on people’s heads to turn them into zombies we can remotely control.” I’m tempted to laugh. Valve, a game company famous for titles like Half Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Dota (and possibly more famous for the sequels of each of those) has a very tight relationship with makers. I was visiting the Bellevue, Washington headquarters to see how this traditional gaming software company ended up as the creator of arguably the most cutting-edge VR hardware on the market, the HTC Vive. I pick up a device that looks like some kind of optician’s torture tool, a set of lenses lined up to the bright and shiny end of a dismantled pico laser projector. In the Beginning, There Was Nausea The Big Launch
Bring your classroom to life with Augmented Reality Augmented Reality (AR) has become a real "hot topic" in education recently. If you're not familiar with it, we describe AR as making a static image come to life - just like the posters from Harry Potter. It might sound crazy, but it really exists. There's a lot of great educational AR products out there. If AR is to reach its fullest potential in education, we believe you have to put the tech in the kid's hands and allow them to create their own AR. Here are a few successful examples of students and teachers using Aurasma to create meaningful learning experiences: - taking a photo of a book cover and creating a video of a student giving a book review. - adding another dimension to "living museums" where visitors can scan trigger images and watch them come to life, making the living museum experience that much more involved. - creating tutorial videos that are attached to homework that is being sent home. -Create posters or billboards to promote exciting upcoming events and features.
Creating Learning Objects Printer-friendly version Supporting student learning with online resources at Fanshawe College In 2007, a counsellor in the Accessibility Office at Fanshawe College in London received a grant to study and support the learning styles of students with learning disabilities enrolled in apprenticeship programs. As many of the students learned more effectively with visual resources, it was decided to create video materials that would be accessible to all learners to enhance and review what they had heard and seen in the classrooms in lectures and live demonstrations. The videos were produced collaboratively, with the Learning Object Studio working with the professors in Motive Power (now the School of Transportation Technology) and the Accessibility Office. Innovation To supplement the learning, the original videos have been linked to the animation of the braking systems. The Learning Object Studio has created learning objects for many programs at Fanshawe College. Outcomes and Benefits
Getting Started with Virtual Reality: Building for Google Cardboard | Make This is part 2 of our series introducing Makers to Virtual reality. If you haven’t already seen it, you should go check out: An Introduction To Unity. The Google Cardboard headset is the perfect and inexpensive way to get started with virtual reality for anyone who owns a smartphone. Mainstream companies are already helping get headsets into the hands of the public like wildfire. The New York Times recently sent out more than a million Google Cardboard headsets to its subscribers, bringing VR to a whole new audience. I’m looking to share the basics of how people who are used to building physical things can get involved in helping build these VR experiences in Unity. In this article, we will look at how you can bring the Google Cardboard camera into a Unity project so we can view a scene in virtual reality. Importing the Google Cardboard SDK To bring in the capabilities of a Google Cardboard headset into Unity, you’ll need to download the Cardboard SDK for Unity. Adjusting The VR Camera
Global Forum : Quand les enseignants et les élèves inventent Du 11 au 14 mars, à Barcelone, le « Global Forum » rassemble, venus du monde entier, enseignants innovants, personnels de direction, industriels, politiques pour échanger expériences et réflexions autour du numérique éducatif. Selon Montserrat Gomendio Kindelan, Secrétaire d’Etat espagnole à l’Education et aux Universités, des méthodes d’enseignement dépassées expliquent les relativement faibles résultats des élèves européens dans les enquêtes comparatives internationales. Ils rencontrent notamment des difficultés à résoudre les problèmes, à débattre, à faire preuve d'esprit critique, d’innovation et de créativité. Sur tous ces aspects, le numérique présente des intérêts pédagogiques, pour peu que les enseignants acceptent de changer de posture et cherchent à stimuler les élèves dans les apprentissages : que s’inventent simultanément de nouvelles façons d’enseigner et d’apprendre. La philosophie enrichie Apprendre l’anglais par l’écriture créative La technologie citoyenne Tellagami Aurasma
Ten Reflections on the First Year of an iPad Pilot | Ed Tech Diva Passing out iPads to students on the first day of school was like celebrating Christmas (or in this case Hanukkah) with thirty antsy kids sitting around the tree, attempting to hide their impatience. Once the iPads had been handed out, students were instantly excited, engaged and enchanted with the new learning device in their hands. At first, everyone was confused about where to find work, where to save and store their products – and which app to use for what purpose. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Like this: Like Loading... Exploring Augmented Reality with Vuforia and Unity It has always been a dream of mine to play with the holograms from Star Wars. While that dream may still be a long ways down the line, there is some supplemental hope for my space fantasy. A company called Qualcomm has released a technology called Vuforia, which among many other applications, can help you play with a concept called augmented reality. Augmented reality is different from entirely virtual reality, which is another type of digital experience that is often lumped together with augmented reality. The primary difference is that virtual reality, or VR, is immersive and places you inside an entirely new world trying its very best to remove you from the physical world. Augmented reality, or AR, does not do this. Vuforia enables AR through the use of some specific technology built for mobile phones, and a video game engine called Unity.
6 Steps to Add Voice Comments to Google Docs Here is a step by step guide to show you how you can add " Voice Comments " within your Google Docs. This application is developed by 121 Writing. Here is how you can do it : 1- Head over to your Google Docs and click on " Create". scroll down to the bottom and click on "connect more apps " 2- Type in the word " voice " in the search panel then click on connect in front of " voice comments " 3- Go back to your Google Docs and right click on the document you want to add voice comments to then select open with voice comments 4- The document will open in a new window, click on the record button as shown in the screenshot below. 5- To share your voice feedback click on " share with collaborators ". You and your collaborators can access it Google Docs via the "Comments" button on the top-right corner beside the Share button.
Getting Started with Virtual Reality: An Introduction to Unity The Maker community is an extraordinary bunch filled with wild ideas and potential, limited only by the capabilities of the components they can get their hands on — but what if I told you there were worlds you could have complete control over? They’re out there, and over the next few years we’ll see their populations and influences explode. And I’m not talking about Mars. You’ll soon be able to roam these virtual worlds in an incredibly immersive way thanks to advancements in virtual reality. So we’re launching a new series here at Make: all about DIY virtual reality. What is Unity? Unity is a game development platform that can create both 2D and 3D games. Downloading Unity Unity comes with two versions, the Personal Edition and the Professional Edition. To download either edition, head over to the Get Unity page. Building a Unity Project When you start a Unity project, it creates the folder and files automatically. Assets — All of the resources for your Unity project will be in here.
A true model for mobile learning: how we interact with technology I was fortunate enough to see Cirque du Soleil last night, an astonishing performance of athleticism and creativity. For those of you who haven’t seen them, Cirque provide a modern take on circus skills, blending vibrant costumes, elaborate props and modern technology. They have some seriously ambitious staging: in this case, giant video screens that formed the floor, but could rise up to make walls or slopes, all the stage for the performance. The technology, in itself, was impressive, but it’s role was to facilitate the creativity. In an opening scene, the large central video screen showed an image of a train moving along, whilst three ‘vandals‘ in harnesses danced and scaled the wall, then were able to ‘run‘ along the vertical screen, spraying digital graffiti onto the moving train. Like a giant iPad, interaction between people and image, technology facilitating the creative process and storytelling. Social technology: to serve and to create Like this: Like Loading...
Sculpting 3D Printable Items in Virtual Reality with Oculus Medium When we were writing the Virtual Reality issue of Make Magazine, we kept asking ourselves how virtual reality relates to makers. We covered topics like home built headsets, prototypes, custom control systems, and similar electronics projects. However, we didn’t really talk about what people would be using virtual reality for, in terms of making other non-vr related things. This was mainly because there just wasn’t much available in terms of tools. I got a chance to demo a program called Oculus Medium, which is like sculpting with a magical clay dispenser. You may be thinking to yourself, “this doesn’t seem very practical”. I typically make an octopus when I play with any new material or medium. Oculus Medium isn’t the only software going in this direction. The future of modeling in virtual reality is very unknown right now. Frankly, I can’t think of what advantages VR would have for CAD modeling off the top of my head.
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